


Ghouls

by thegirl



Category: An Inspector Calls - Priestley
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst with a Happy Ending, Eric gets a move on, F/M, Happy Ending, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Suicide Attempt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-16
Updated: 2015-09-16
Packaged: 2018-04-21 02:50:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,816
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4812146
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thegirl/pseuds/thegirl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Eric turned around just in time to see a previously shadowy piece of wall become a silhouette, which beneath the flickering street lights turned into the shape of a woman.</p><p>“Sarah!” he called, and she turned toward him. Her eyes were red rimmed and widened at the sight of him, and she looked so thin he thought he was going to be sick. Her chapped lips opened and closed for a moment, as if she couldn’t find any words.</p><p>“Eric,” she finally rasped. He stepped towards her, cautiously, the wild look in her eyes making him wary she would bolt like a young colt.</p><p>“Oh god, Sarah,” he says, taking in her full appearance. “You look half dead.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	Ghouls

**Author's Note:**

> Also known as: I cannot have been the only one screaming at the TV for Eric to go out and find her quicker, and not hang around with people he hated to 'celebrate' not being murderers. So this is it, where Eric speeds up a bit and saves a life.

The air was so cold it burned, and the smoke from all the factories made Eric’s eyes water. He let out a cough to clear his throat and shoved his hand deeper into his pockets. Her lodgings were somewhere around here. He knew it.

Eric had been walking for around an hour, and he couldn’t feel his face. He would have been quicker, but his father had refused to let him take the car, saying that he could find Sarah tomorrow. But he couldn’t. After the evening they’d had, what he’d thought had happened to her, to his child-

Inspector Goole’s face swam before his eyes, the solemn look in his eyes that seemed to whisper _you know what you did, you know what you did._ Eric made his hands into fists into his coat pockets, and his untrimmed nails bit into the palms of his hands.

_He was so hungry, so drunk, she was so beautiful, so beautiful, she was so soft and warm and smelling like lavender, she was scrabbling beneath him, his nails scraped against her midriff eliciting a cry-_

Eric span around, thinking he heard footsteps tapping behind him, his breath puffing like smoke in the cold night. There was no one there. Not for the first time, Eric wished that he had brought a cigar to calm his nerves. But of course, there was no time for that.

He needed to find Sarah.

Eric turned around just in time to see a previously shadowy piece of wall become a silhouette, which beneath the flickering street lights turned into the shape of a woman.

“Sarah!” he called, and she turned toward him. Her eyes were red rimmed and widened at the sight of him, and she looked so thin he thought he was going to be sick. Her chapped lips opened and closed for a moment, as if she couldn’t find any words.

“Eric,” she finally rasped. He stepped towards her, cautiously, the wild look in her eyes making him wary she would bolt like a young colt.

“Oh god, Sarah,” he says, taking in her full appearance. “You look half dead.”

A huge shiver ripples through Sarah’s frail body, and she staggers back. Eric skitters forward, holding out a hand to catch her if she falls but she rights herself.

“Eric,” she says in a raw voice and moves to pull away, “Oh, Eric. I have to- I have to go-”

“Please don’t. It’s not safe.” Eric asks, almost shocked by how desperate he is that she doesn’t leave him. Because she is alive, she is alive and he’d half thought she wouldn’t be, even though there were no girls in the infirmary that night, and he can see how her belly is rounded out, how the bones in her cheeks make her look like a skeleton with skin stretched over her bones. She freezes, and looks around the alley like someone is watching her.

“I need to go-” she says quietly, eyes set deep in sunken sockets that can’t quite meet his eyes, “I mean, I suppose I could-”

“Come home with me, Sarah.” Eric’s words rush out of his mouth like a waterfall, “I’m not going back without you.”

The little blood in her cheeks drains away at his words, and her eyes widen. She totters back, and for the first time Eric sees the clear bottle she is gripping with white knuckles in her left hand.

“No, Eric, I can’t go with you-” she stutters, and unexpectedly her eyes fill with tears, “It’s not possible-”

“Yes,” Eric tells her, and closes the distance between them in two quick strides, and takes her free hand in his, “It is. It is.”

A single tear slides down her white cheek, and without thinking Eric wipes it away, but his hand lingers on her clammy skin, her cheekbone far too sharp on his palm.

“It would ruin you-”

“I am ruined already.” Eric insists, and raises her weak, unresisting hand to his lips, and kisses it. Beneath his fingers she trembled like a leaf in a hurricane. “And I did it all by myself. Do not ask me to leave you again, because I won’t go. I won’t leave. Not again, you hear me Sarah? I won’t go.”

“You should go, though. You should go. It would be better, better for all of us-”

“Not from where I’m standing.” Eric tells her, his throat dry, “I was a coward, before. I won’t be again. You deserve- you deserve so much more. You deserve a proper husband and a proper home, not those terrible lodgings, and you deserve a proper life and a proper job, and maybe I could give you those things one day in the future-”

Sarah’s lip trembles. “I don’t have a future, Eric. I don’t, I’m sorry, I need to go-”

“Can I come with you?”

Sarah got flustered. “No, I mean, it’s not like-”

“Well, who are you meeting?”

Sarah bit her lip. “No one, I was just going to see the lights in the park-”

“I’ll go with you then-”

“No!” Sarah cried, “I have to do this alone! I have to, I have to, I can’t hurt anyone else anymore, I have to, I can’t go on-”

For a moment, Eric doesn’t really grasp her meaning before it suddenly hits him like a freight train, and he’s staring at her, staring at her beautiful, beautiful, half-dead face that is frozen in some kind of terror of what he’ll do, sucking in air to his suddenly empty lungs.

“Sarah,” he says, “give me the bottle.” He doesn’t know how he sounds so calm, because inside he is screaming, screaming at the top of his lungs, but his hand doesn’t even shake as he holds it out.

She grips it all the tighter, and huddles it to her chest. The clear liquid – detergent, Eric thinks, and he can feel his barely touched dinner from hours before rising in his throat, and feels the most horrible desire to scream and cry and laugh all at the same time – reflects the light of the moon, and it’s strangely beautiful.

It should not be beautiful. It is a murder weapon that just hasn’t been used yet, it was going to leave Sarah a wreck in an infirmary with a hole in her insides, choking and not beautiful, not anymore.

“Sarah,” he says again, more forcefully, and tries to channel something of his father that can always get people to do things they don’t want to – even if it makes them hate him. Eric, who had always cared so much about being liked, suddenly doesn’t give a shit if Sarah likes him. He’ll wrestle that bottle away from her if he has to, he’ll scream and shout and smash the glass around them.

But right then, there’s no need for that, as Sarah’s grip is loosening.

“You don’t understand,” she says weakly, staring at something behind him that Eric doesn’t dare turn to see, “You can’t. It would be better and beautiful and over. I could be happy again. I can’t now, not here, oh my sweet Eric. You can’t know how bad it is. The pain- oh god, the pain Eric. You can’t know. I’ve been so alone, so alone and it hurts all the time, I keep on having nightmares that our baby will come out with horns and a tail. It’s better to stop it all before it gets that far.”

“Give me the bottle, Sarah.”

She doesn’t even seem to realize what she’s doing until the cool glass is in his hands, and Eric wastes no time undoing the stopper and tipping it upside down, letting the washing detergent rip apart the dirt on the cobblestones and not Sarah’s insides. Sarah watches as if detached, at the liquid swirling alongside their feet.

“You shouldn’t have done that,” she finally tells him, swaying, “I needed that.”

“You need somewhere warm,” Eric tells her firmly, and without a thought of how the wind seems to be ripping through him, he takes off his coat and puts it over her shoulders, “I’m taking you home.”

“I met your mother,” Sarah tells him weakly as he guides her back towards the main road where he should be able to hail a cab and be able to pay for it back at the house, “I called myself Mrs Birling. She wasn’t happy. She didn’t believe me. She didn’t help. And your sister I think. And your father used to employ me, did you know? They’ll all hate me. All of them.”

Eric swallows, but doesn’t let himself react. Some part of him had known this, had known the inspector-that-wasn’t-an-inspector wasn’t lying, had known it was his Sarah from the very beginning. His Sarah, no – his Alice Grey, his Daisy Renton, his Eva Smith.

“Nobody will bother you,” he swears as he steers her through the dirty streets, “no one at all. The servants will bring you as much food as you want, and you’ll have a bed softer than anything you’ve ever slept in before and I’ll marry you like I should have in the first place. It will all be-” he searches for the right word before landing on Sara- no, Eva’s – very own words from earlier “it will be better, and beautiful, and we can close this part of your life together. It will be over, all of it.”

She stops walking then, even though the main street’s lamps are within sight. Eva looks up at him with those big eyes of hers, and grits her teeth.

“Promise you won’t leave.” She says, sounding suddenly focused as if she’d come out of her haze in a rush, “Promise you won’t abandon me. Promise you won’t leave me high and dry with nothing at all. Promise me, if you ever do get tired of us-”

Eric goes to protest, but Eva puts a finger to his lips.

“If you do ever get tired of us,” she continues, “then you won’t shame me or leave our child and you'll still provide for us. Promise me.” On the penultimate word, her voice broke.

“I promise.” Eric swears, and brings her hands up to his lips and kisses them dryly but hard, trying to put all the meaning he has into that one touch.

A half smile lights up Eva’s gaunt face, and Eric can almost see the girl she once was, the one that hadn’t been eaten whole by his family’s actions. _You’ll be that girl again_ , he promises to her silently, _I’ll make you happy again._

Hand in hand they walked toward the end of the alley where the city lights were shining like a beacon, and for a moment Eric could have sworn he saw a man that looked like Inspector Goole standing on the other side of the street, smiling.

**Author's Note:**

> Come visit me on tumblr: mhysaa.tumblr.com :)  
> As always, please leave a comment and kudos if you enjoyed reading!


End file.
